


Breakable

by maraudersly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 21:32:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4195677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudersly/pseuds/maraudersly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I am in the process of translating my old Harry Potter fanfiction (ahem, drabbles mostly) and posting it here so I can have it all in one place. Please forgive any mistakes and general bad writing, all of them are five years old or more. (This fanfic was written as Bella's POV in Azkaban. And yes, I realise it's not exactly in character, but it was written in 2008, so consider it creative liberties of my fourteen year old self.)</p>
    </blockquote>





	Breakable

**Author's Note:**

> I am in the process of translating my old Harry Potter fanfiction (ahem, drabbles mostly) and posting it here so I can have it all in one place. Please forgive any mistakes and general bad writing, all of them are five years old or more. (This fanfic was written as Bella's POV in Azkaban. And yes, I realise it's not exactly in character, but it was written in 2008, so consider it creative liberties of my fourteen year old self.)

Cygnus was pacing back and forth, outside of the room where  _she_ was born. Cygnus, my father. Her, my sister. I was one year old, and was sitting on the top of the stairs, waiting to meet her. Andromeda Black. I was grumpy, according to my grandfather because, as was often the case in the Black family, the attention was always won over by the youngest member and I, even at that early age, already knew it. I didn't want her there, and resented her for being born. Truthfully, I wanted my parents to myself, and no one else. I wanted her gone. That never happened.

She arrived amidst an anguished scream and a puff of smoke off the cigar in Cygnus' mouth, and as soon as her little red head came out of my mother's body, she had already won them all over. People have mistakenly assumed that us Blacks do not love. We love, yes, and deeply so. But to demonstrate it is a kind of weakness: it gives our enemies a weak link through which to hurt us. And the Blacks would never give ourselves the luxury of being hurt by something quite as stupid as love. Not outside of our own, private core.

I told you she won them over then, but not me. Oh, no. She won me over when I heard her first word. Because the first word she ever managed had not been mama or papa, nor anything of the sort. No, her first word had been  _Bella_ , and she had me from the moment she said it. She had my heart. We were like porcelain – we'd break at the slightest touch, the flimsiest fall and, for that, no one allowed us to be out of sight. That is, until Narcissa's birth. When Cissy was born, I was four years old. Andie was three. And we had already forged a bond that could never yield enough for another person.

For yeas Narcissa attempted to join us, but we wouldn't let her. Often I have thought that to be the reason why she became so weak. The reason why she hid behind the money and security Lucius always brought her. They say they love each other, but I will never believe it. Blacks don't love those that don't belong within their own parallel universe. Then again, Narcissa stopped being a Black the second she signed the papers that joined her in holy matrimony.

I miss those days, when Andie and I were accomplices. Looking back on it, that was probably the only time of our relationship that wasn't disturbed and problematic. I miss our innocence. We were children, after all. And we stopped being so the day we watched Cygnus break a bottle of firewhisky against the side of out mother's face. From then on, he was no longer my father, nor was the Andromeda's. He was Cissy's, because she _needed_ one.

Spells kept my mother's delicate, pale face from being branded, but nothing could ever change how that gestured tore through all three of our souls. How it left a deep, bleeding gash that would never and could never heal. And for that, I blame him for everything that happened between Andie and me. I blame him for all I became. For all she has become. And for what happened to my mother.

I watched her whither little by little, year after year until the last breath of life left her body. I was eleven years old. Andromeda was ten. And I was leaving for Hogwarts and would only see my sister the next summer. One year. Three hundred days, give or take a few. And how she changed.

I saw her again the day we had the Lestranges came over for dinner. It was the first day of my summer holiday. It was the beginning of my nightmare. And hers. Because, on that day, Cygnus had me betrothed to Rodolphus. Rodolphus, who was seventeen and would soon begin his seventh and last year at Hogwarts. And when Cygnus and Monsieur Lestrange both shook hands as though closing a prosperous deal (Cygnus had always wanted a male heir), Rodolphus looked at me in a way that made every hair on my body stand up. But I didn't let him see it, because Blacks do not demonstrate emotions outside of their family core. 

That night, after the Lestranges were gone and I had shut myself inside my room, under the covers, I heard my door open and close and, soon, Andie was by my side in bed. With my wand I shed light in the space between our faces, hidden under the sheets. And she looked at me as though she was scared, bringing her bitten nails to her mouth and chewing was was left of them. I told her it would end soon, whatever it was that we had, and she asked me what to do. I gave her the only answer I could. _Let's enjoy it while it lasts_. And that was how we slept that night, distressed and hidden under the covers, in our own private universe that no one else could ever join. 

I always liked Andromeda's bitten nails. I think that's why I was so surprised when, in my return to Hogwarts, as she was beginning her first year, I noticed her nails. They were red (almost as much as her hair) and long, perfectly filed and polished, matching her soft hands and contrasting against her pale skin. I remember her asking what I thought of them, and her disappointed look when I told her I preferred them as they were. But I couldn't say more, because we were in the Slytherin common room and Rodolphus had just arrived.

Judging by his expression, he seemed to have been looking for me. I disappeared through some irrelevant tapestry and didn't see Andie again for a few more days. We were always missing each other and, in my hurry to escape Rodolphus at every corner, wasn't helping with our meetings. When I met her again her nails were, once again, free of colour and bitten through to stubs. She was, once again, my Andie. And when she saw me, she smiled, in a way that I only ever saw her do for me and no one else.

Andie had always had the reddest lips I had ever seen and, in that moment, something – which, to this day, I couldn't tell you what it was – overcame me and I kissed her. But it wasn't a sisterly kiss, oh no. It was a kiss full of repressed passion, a secret. _Our_ secret. And, much to my surprise, she kissed me back with almost as much intensity, if not more. It was strange, it was forbidden and it was _good_ , and we enjoyed it. And so we began meeting in secret every day, under a hidden hatch at the bottom of a broom closet somewhere. Such wicked girls, the two of us. 

Five years of hidden rendezvous', always running away from Rodolphus and whoever else, at Hogwarts or at home. We enjoyed it as we had promised we would. During that time, Cygnus promised Andie's hand in marriage to Rabastan, and she had no choice bu to say yes, as I had. Cissy chose Lucius of her own free will, and Cygnus couldn't be more proud. She had always been her favourite, because Cissy still called him father, and Cissy _needed_ him.

On the first day after I graduated Hogwarts, Rodolphus showed up at my house. He was twenty two then, sporting a goatee and no longer looking at me with hungry eyes as he had when we were teenagers. And, for the first time, I thought him _handsome_. Andromeda stared at him with the best look of disgust she could muster before climbing up the stairs, and leaving me alone with him and Cygnus.

The wedding was scheduled to take place on August 15th. In two weeks' time. And I had never been more miserable. Not because I was getting married, because at least then I'd have someone to keep me company until Andie left school and, after that, we had all the time in the world at our reach. I was miserable because I couldn't bear to see her miserable. It hurt me, and cut me so deeply that I didn't think that wound would ever stop bleeding. 

When the day finally came, I was glowing. Rodolphus's mother, aunt Walburga and my grandmother had never been happier. Sirius looked at me as though he couldn't quite grasp what could possibly make someone commit for life, and I wanted to answer that it was due to the obligation you had to those whose blood you share. But Sirius would never understand because, even then, Sirius refused to be one of us, and refused to fulfill his obligations to his blood. I, on the other hand, was a Black through and through.

I walked down the isle wearing white. Truth be told, I don't think I have ever felt as much of a hypocrite as I did in that moment. I could feel Andie's icy stare burning a hole through me. She could not believe I was going through with a promise that hadn't been my own, couldn't believe that I was surrendering myself to it, and she could also not believe that I was doing as Cygnus commanded when I had promised my dying mother that I would not.

But whether or not Andromeda believe it, there I was, arm linked through Rodolphus's, seeing Andromeda's and Sirius' incredulous stares, and I wanted to _run_. I wanted to not have been born Bellatrix Black, and I wanted to not be Cygnus's daughter, but I was both, and there was nothing I could do about that. And I wasn't going to run away, because running is for the weak. Or, at least, that's what I always told myself. 

I spent my wedding night in a haze, allowed Rodolphus to do all the work as I watched my gold wedding band glint under the moonlight. It wasn't as though he was terrible in bed or anything of the sort, but he was brutish, indelicate, and too desperate – he was hurting me, and didn't care at all, because he had always wanted me and not, at last, he had me. To sum it up, he was not Andie and, for that, he wasn't worth a second of my attention.

Once he was done, his body going limp on top of mine, I made it a point to push him off and opened the bedroom's door, not even bothering to get dressed, in order to go down to the kitchen ant get myself a glass of firewhisky. So many promises broken in a single day – I had promised myself to never drink firewhisky so long as the image of a bottle of Ogden's shattering on my mother's face was still vivid, and to this day, I don't think I could forget if I tried.

As I turned around to leave the kitchen, I found Andie, who hugged me after brushing away the damp locks of hair off my sweaty face. And there, in her arms, I succumbed. I cried as I hadn't done since I left the diapers, allowing her to envelop me in her satin robe, squeezing me against her chest. The satin was not as soft as her skin, and did little to warm me. I could live off Andromeda, so much was the intensity of our dangerous relationship. I pulled the shining ring off my finger, and held on to her tightly, until I felt as though my paper thin skin was almost ripping off of me.

It would end soon, she had told me once again, asking me what to do and, once more, I gave her the only answer I could. _Let's enjoy it while it lasts_. And, while Rodolphus slept in my bed, which I had only shared with Andie until then, we went back to her room and I noticed I had never been in there. The walls were purple and the air was scented with violets and cigarette smoke. I had never known Andie smoked. Only then did I fully grasp how little I knew her. That night, I made it a point to fix that, between moans stuffed against the pillows and hands exploring bodies. That was our goodbye, though I didn't know it then.

Andie ran off the next day with a muggleborn by the name of Ted Tonks, that had gone to Hogwarts and attended Hufflepuff. They got married and I never saw her again. Sirius ran away a few years later. And, secretly, I envied them. Because running was not for the weak. Running was for the strong, and I never had that strength. I wish I had. Andromeda was strong because she wasn't just a star, she was a constellation. And Sirius was strong because he was the brightest star in the night sky. I was just a lump of rock lost in the cosmos. Beautiful, but hollow. _Simple_. After Andie left, I became submissive. First to Rodolphus and then to the Dark Lord. And I will die submissive to them both, but I will always belong to Andromeda, no matter what comes to pass.

Because Andie was my sister, my mother, my best friend, my first love, my first kiss, my first time, my first laugh, and she will never stop being all of that. She won me over with her first word. I won her over with my first look. We made each other hole. The last time we saw each other, I was seventeen years old. Andie was sixteen. And we were in love, and it was wrong. But we had always loved the thing that were wrong for us, and the ones that made little sense. Marrying Rodolphus was wrong. Running away with Ted, too. But we enjoyed it.

We were so wrong and, at the same time, so right. Like porcelain dolls, made of the thickest layers of the material, and yet, easily breakable. We were broken on the inside. And forever. But we would never let people know that. Because us Blacks only show emotions to those in their family core. And Andie could always read mine without me needing to ever say a word.

It was what made us equal and so very different at the same time. Images reflected in each other. Opposites and, still, halves. I was the weak link. I let go first. Andromeda would never forgive me for that. And I didn't want her to.


End file.
